


All That Is Left

by Wikiaddicted723



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-29
Updated: 2012-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-30 08:05:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/329614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post TDWD, AU. What if Walternate didn't come alone to ask for help? Coda to ziparumpazoo's "Objets Perdus"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziparumpazoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziparumpazoo/gifts).



It rarely snows these days.

 

She stands there, alone, her hands shoved deep into her coat pockets as she watches the blood – red smudge of the sun disappear on the horizon, a slow drizzle of rain falling steadily on her already wind – mussed hair. It is all they will get for the winter, rain and cold; she cannot forget the cold.

 

Today is never a good day, for reasons that she’d rather not be reminded of, too many to keep track. The cold slab of stone in front of her should be reason enough, Ella thinks. She wonders why she bothers at times, why she comes back year after year, when she knows that there is no body underneath her feet, no earthly remains of the woman who gave birth to her rotting away six feet beneath the ground. Sometimes she believes she would do better visiting their forgotten apartment complex in all its ambered glory.

 

There is movement on her side, a subtle rustling of the wind, a soft squishing of the muddy, rain – soaked grass as steps approach her. She doesn’t turn, doesn’t need to. She knows who it is, disrupting the frail illusion of calm and composure she has developed over the years, or tried to. She closes her eyes, her head slightly thrown back in the breeze. It smells of loneliness and regrets, but that might just be her imagination.

 

He puts a hand on her arm, the subtle touch enough to make her open her eyes, her vision falling once more on the ground, on her Mother’s name as it calls to her, etched deep into the granite. He has brought flowers, but that shouldn’t surprise her; he always does. This time it’s a single blossom, a tulip, stark white and pure like the snow they won’t have, and part of her thanks him. Her mother always liked snow.

 

Ella asked him once, why he did it, why he came every year to this desolate place where none of the graves belonged to his own. Where none of them were truly his family.

 

“They could have been,” he’d answered, and she’d had no comeback for that, the words stuck in her throat because even though she saw him speaking, it was her aunt she heard behind those words, behind those eyes.

She also knows some part of him does it for her, and for himself, because as long as they have each other they need not be alone.

 

They are all that is left, them and Walter.

 

“Lets get out of here,” Henry says now, his voice rough with disuse as he pulls her away from the grave, her feet following him willingly towards her car, their breath white mist in the chill of the evening that settles around them.

 

He’s a far cry from the gangly teenager she met all those years ago, tall and well shaped, comely you could say, handsome even; and leaner than Peter ever was, with all his easy charm when he chooses to use it, though the more usual taciturn seriousness is all Dunham.

 

“Keys,” he orders, having moved to the driver’s side of the government –issue SUV without her noticing, one of his hands raised in waiting, the other holding a suspicious looking thermos she had failed to notice before.

 

“I thought you had a car,” she says, mildly annoyed, eyebrow raised to let him know he can’t really order her around, even if she knows that’s not what he’s doing. And he does have one, an exact replica of hers, like every other Fringe Agent does.

 

“ I took a cab here,” he says, deadpan. She rolls her eyes at him, throwing the keys a little more towards his face than he expects and grinning in satisfaction when he’s forced to duck and retrieve them from the ground, pleased at the small crinkle of a smile forming in the corner of his mouth. The amount of responsibility he insists on keeping on his shoulders makes her wonder who the kid really is between the two of them.

 

 “What?” she asks, feeling him stare at her as she fastens her seatbelt, turning to watch as his face breaks into a teasing smile he reserves for family and those close to him, a smile he reserves for her; and Walter when he feels charitable. His eyes turn back to the road, one of his hands coming up to scratch at his short - cropped beard. It makes him look older than his age, but aren’t they all these days?

 

“Nothing.” He says, mischief in his eyes that makes him look very Bishop as he starts the car, taking them in a direction she has seldom gone after leaving the cemetery. He plans on leaving it at that she knows, but she’s nothing if not stubborn even if she still sucks a little at the whole interrogator gig, and she can see a plan brewing in his eyes clear as day.

 

“Where are we going?” she insists, wanting nothing more than to go home, keeping her voice as neutral as she can manage, thoughts of the people she’s lost still swirling unbidden in the back of her mind.

 

“You’ll see.” He’s back to the holier – than – thou poker face she hates, and she wonders why she still puts up with his antics after all these years. Not that she doesn’t enjoy them, but that’s beside the point.

 

“ _Henry,”_ she warns, trying – and failing miserably – to sound threatening. He used to call her an ‘angry kitten’ when she used the tone on his younger self, back when he was more of a pain in the ass. He still laughs at the memory.

 

“Trust me, you’ll like It.” he says with finality, his eyes flickering towards her before returning to the road, and she knows she won’t get a word more from him. It’s unnerving at times, how he resembles so closely a woman he never met.

 

She sighs, leaning her head against the chilled glass of the window, her eyes drooping as all the weariness of the day floods her. She’s learned to recognize his silence as unobtrusive companionship rather than apathy and his presence comforts her, makes her feel safe because she knows him better than she would a brother, knows his quirks and nuances and has a better grasp at the way his thoughts form than anyone else. 

 

She thinks there’s a very real possibility that he might know her just as well.

 

Henry turns the radio on with a flick of his finger, keeps the volume low on some old, homey song she thinks could be Barry White and she lets the barely perceptible rumble of the bass and the monotone of the never changing panorama of the city out the window lull her slowly to sleep.

 

***

 

Ella wakes to warm hands that shake her gently, the air chilly around her as she sits up, rubbing at her eyes and raking a hand through her hair as her vision clears.

 

“Slept well?” Henry asks, teasing but not unkind, his eyes as warm as the hand that lies still on her shoulder. It amazes her how far he’s come from that angry, bitter kid in that hospital bed, though she suspects he’s simply buried somewhere deep within the man, his reappearance plausible if the circumstances permit.

 

“It would’ve been better if I were _home,_ on an actual _bed_ ” she points out, hearing him chuckle, “but it’ll do for the time being.” She rolls her neck, the vertebrae popping loudly from the awkward position she’d been forced to sleep in, and looks around her.

 

They seem to have arrived at a park, one of the few that remain open this close to the state line, the green pastures interrupted by an array of children’s games, as they lie strewn around in no discernible pattern. She frowns, both confused and curious at his choice of setting.

 

She raises her eyebrows, “A park?”

 

“Yep,” he says, biting his lip as he pulls on his beanie so it covers his rosy ears, he has always hated the cold. She fights the urge to snort at his lack of elaboration, “C’mon,” he says, nodding his head in the direction of the swing set as he starts making his way towards it, the big Thermos she’d noticed earlier once more in his hand.

 

She unbuckles her seat belt, exiting the car and closing the heavy door behind her, shaking her head as she wonders when this became her definition of normal, of home and the warmth of a family, dysfunctional and diminutive as it may be.

 

It is, all in all, a beautiful place. The grass well kempt, the games recently painted, well oiled. She decides, standing at the edge, that she likes it here, likes the lightness of the air, the kind of quiet that doesn’t speak of impending doom. Ella reaches him on the swings soon after he’s made himself comfortable, his figured slumped, legs stretched out as far as he can without dropping the container between his thighs, hands curled around taut chains. She sits beside him, expectant.

 

“Look up,” Henry whispers, and she does, curious. She’s not disappointed.

 

One of the things they lost when the universe started falling apart was the beauty of a star – filled night, the moon the only light in their sky; her scarce childhood memories a bitter reminder of the way things were, the way they would never be again.

 

It is a memory he’s giving back to her, now, as she finds herself under the New York night sky, the light of Andromeda herself shining down on them, and she wishes for the hundredth time that she could have inherited her aunt’s photographic memory.

 

“How?” is all she can bear to ask, her tongue heavy, her eyes wide in wonder.

 

Henry shrugs, “ there are…spots, where the degradation hasn’t gone as far, I just happened to stumble on this one the other day, thought I’d show it to you.”

 

He grabs the thermos, unscrews the cap and pours a good amount of dark liquid into it, tasting it before passing it along to her, “Careful,” he says, “it’s spiked.”

 

She drinks, scrunching her face at the suddenness of the burn on the back of her throat, _“What_ is this?”

 

“I call it,” he says with amusement and a little chagrin in his voice, “the Walter.”

 

“Huh?” she watches him shrug and turn his head just enough to look at her.

 

“Three parts coffee, one part diluted whipped cream, two parts bourbon,” he says, “great for migraines, back aches and all – nighters, thus _the Walter_.”

 

It might have been the absurdity of the situation, or the sheepish look on his face, but whatever it is that does it she doesn’t care. She laughs, on this day of all days, and she has him to thank him for it.

 

“Why did you bring me here, really?” Ella asks sometime later, when the silence is thick and heavy between them, though never really uncomfortable. She’s still looking up at the stars, willing the tiny lights to burn themselves into her retinas, but she can’t help but be curious. It’s a character flaw, she knows. It’s also what makes her good at her job, makes her ask questions others wouldn’t really think of posing.

 

He sighs, “ To keep you from drowning in your bathtub before burying yourself under a pound of quilts and crying yourself to sleep until the universe calls tomorrow morning.” He says, his voice seven shades of serious. She’s not really surprised that he knows all that.

 

“Because you’ve done the same for me,” he says, sometime later.

 

The meaning behind his words, behind his gesture goes unspoken, it’s undeniable presence enough for the both of them as she reaches towards him and takes his hand in her smaller one, giving it a squeeze before letting them hang between them.

 

He squeezes back, and she hears the words he doesn’t say, an echo of her own, not so long ago.

 

_Because you’re all I have left._


	2. Chapter 2

Ella hates phones. Her own to be precise, as the shrill pitch of its ringing disrupts the peace and intimacy of the moment, the insistent vibration threatening to damage something as the glass surface beneath it shrieks its displeasure in a series of clinks and buzzes that she rushes to stop, somehow managing to balance the glass of wine in her hand along the way. She doesn’t even check the caller ID before she hits send.

 

“Dunham,” she answers sleepily, slurring the syllables together until she sounds drunk.

 

“…”

 

“Hello?” she repeats, waiting, “Look if this is a prank…”

 

“It’s me,” comes Henry’s broken voice from the other end of the line.  She sits up properly on the couch, leaving the almost drained glass of wine to rest on the table as she brushes her hair out of her face, feeling her boyfriend’s hand come to rest on her back.

 

“Henry? What’s up? Are you hurt?” she asks, worried. They surely would’ve called her from the hospital had anything happened to him, seeing as they are each others only emergency contact, the fact that it’s him calling her alerts her that whatever has happened has nothing to do with injuries of the flesh, meaning that Walter is probably involved in some form or another.

 

“No, I’m fine, I uh…” he rambles, sounding intoxicated, off –kilter, “ I was wondering if I could crash on your sofa tonight?” he asks, his voice gruff.

 

She looks over her shoulder at the man lying back on the couch and sighs, thinking of how much she’d like to be able to say no to him and go back to cuddling when Henry speaks again, “Please?” he says, “ I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

 

That does it. She can’t leave him like that and tell him to go home, if only because the fact that he admits to needing something as simple as company tells her of just how drunk he must be at the moment, no easy feat onto itself.

 

“Listen,” she starts, “I’m not home right now, but why don’t you let yourself in. You know where the key is?”

 

“…Yeah”

 

“Ok, I’ll be there in thirty.” She hangs up, not wanting him to tell her anything else on the phone, where she can’t look at him and properly assess the damage. He’s a talkative drunk, something she’s sure he must’ve inherited from Peter. Not that he likes getting drunk much, which makes whatever happened worse in her mind’s eye.

 

“Everything OK?” her boyfriend asks, coming to sit beside her, his hand still on her back.

 

“Yeah.” She exhales slowly, “but I think we’re going to have to take a rain check here…there’s something I need to do.”

 

“Work again?” he asks sweetly, knowing the weight of responsibility himself.

 

“Something like that,” she says, cringing inwardly at the lie, “One of my colleagues needs some assistance” it’s not like she can tell him that her cousin from an alternate universe is in need of some company. Confidentiality has always been a sore point in their relationship, but he has understood so far.

 

“Henry?” he asks knowingly, being more than familiar with the man, what with them being practically joined at the hip. It took her a while to convince him that Henry was not a threat to what they had, the truth of the nature of their relationship too wrapped up in red tape for her to explain, though she suspects Rick still hasn’t let it go. She nods.

 

“ ‘K, then just call me when you get home, yes?” he asks, resigned, his shoulders slumping slightly.

 

“Of course,” she says, giving him a small peck on the lips as she stands, picking her coat from the rack by the door as she pulls it open, looking over her shoulder, “see you later.” She closes the door without looking back.

 

*

 

Henry is strewn on his stomach all over her old, lumpy couch when she arrives, his long limbs sticking out in what has to be an uncomfortable position. He turns his head in her general direction as her steps approach him, his eyes red – rimmed and half lidded, world – weary if she were to hazard a guess. He still has his coat on.

 

She drops her bag and keys on the table, hanging her jacket on the back of a chair and kicking her shoes off. She sits on the floor in front of him, her knees to her chest as she runs a hand through his short beard affectionately, knowing how he likes it even though he pretends to get irritable about it, always saying how he’s not a little kid. He was never given the chance to be.

 

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she breaks the silence in the room, the stillness and lack of light making the apartment cocoon – like, so that only whispering seems adequate. “Not really,” he says in a gravelly voice, apologetic. She doesn’t mind, they’re both private like that and she understands. She also understands the need of another human being breathing next to you, of another heartbeat in the room when the world closes up on you with choking force. She always had Aunt Liv before, when she needed it the most, and she and Peter had had each other for a time, however brief. Henry has never had anyone and so Ella has made sure that he has her, when he needs it. He has returned the favor a thousand times over throughout the years because, alternate universe or not, he’s Olivia Dunham’s kid through and through and some things never change.

 

She nods at him, letting him know she doesn’t really mind as she keeps the motion of her hand on his face steady. They stay like that, in the comfort of just existing until her legs fall asleep and his eyelids droop, her hand’s caress long since stopped in favor of resting over the back of his neck. “C’mon, I’m not letting you sleep on the couch tonight,” she says, pulling him up with her and leading him to the only room in her tiny flat as he follows half – heartedly, more asleep than awake in his drunken stupor.

 

Ella keeps him steady as he strips, heaps of clothing falling to the floor until he’s in his undershirt and boxer briefs, a yellowing patch of bruised flesh peeking through the armholes in the wifebeater where he’d hurt his chest on a chase the previous week. She has him lie down in the opposite direction, his feet beside her pillow, thankful once again that she’d thought of buying a bed big enough to fit him in occurrences of this sort. Not that it happens that often, but she is unwilling to take risks after that awful case of food poisoning a few years back where _she’d_ had to sleep on the couch because he only fit on the bed whilst lying diagonally on it. She throws the covers over him and smooths his hair absentmindedly.

 

 She picks his clothing from the floor, placing it on the chair beside the bed and going to the living room to hang his coat beside hers on the rack, the moving around of the material dislodging a document from its inside pocket. She grabs the paper envelope from the ground, finding it heavier than she’d expected, and the seal on the back catches her eye. _New York State Penitentiary_ it says, and she gets an idea of what exactly has Henry like this, berating herself for not having thought about it before. She opens the envelope before she has a chance of changing her mind and reads, understanding downing on her like a splash of ice cold water.

 

His grandfather wants to see him.

 

*

 

Ella wakes to the morning sun shining bright outside her window, the smell of home – brewed coffee filling her nose as she rubs the last dregs of sleep from her eyes, sitting up on the edge of the bed. She turns around looking for the other body in her bed and finds nothing but rumpled sheets, his clothes gone from where she’d put them the night before. She shakes her head in half – hearted annoyance, typical of him to leave without a word.

 

Following the deliciously aromatic scent she arrives at her kitchen to find a fresh pot of warm coffee waiting for her, along with a hastily wrapped package that she makes quick work of, never having developed the patience to not rip it in the process.

It’s a box of fresh strawberries, and the first thing she thinks is that they must have cost him a fortune taking into account the scarcity of the fruit these days, before remembering that he has tons of people who owe him a little more than favors and that it runs in the family to make the impossible possible. She loves strawberries.

 

There’s also a note, or the poor excuse of one, written in his hasty handwriting.

 

_Sorry my drunken ass ruined your evening._

_P.s. You have smelly feet._

She laughs.

 

That night, when Henry gets home and closes the door after him, dropping his coat haphazardly on the nearest piece of furniture he’ll check his answering machine. He’ll find one message.

 

 _If you ever leave without having the decency of saying good bye_ one more time _I swear the universe collapsing will be the least of your troubles, you idiot. And my feet_ don’t _smell…_

_Thanks for the strawberries._

 


	3. Chapter 3

Ella hopes to hell that someone, anyone, brought him home from the hospital. She needs him to be there, breathing somewhere on the other side of the door. She’s tried calling him, after she cleared her head enough to think about him (and isn’t that selfish?) but his phone must have broken on impact, and his home number came off as disconnected.

 

She rummages around in her bag, searching blindly until her hand finally closes around the small metallic object she’d been looking for, the duplicate key he’d given her when he’d bought the place a couple of years ago. She’s inside before she can even think of twisting the thing the right way inside the lock, loosing her bag and coat somewhere on the floor as her feet carry her around the cozy flat. It’s a statement of his personality, this place, a form of organized chaos that few would dare to understand in fear of what they might find, unaware of the man beneath the surface. His gun, badge and keys lie innocent looking on the coffee table, one neat little pile in the corner of the rectangular, polished oak surface that serves to represent the tiny fraction of what others see in comparison to the real thing, files and a couple of mugs strewn all around the living room.

 

She sometimes doubts her own knowledge of him, of his depths and his darkness, too complacent with his lighter shades to look deeper. It doesn’t bother her nearly as much as she’s sure it should, and what that might mean scares her. She’s never been afraid of the dark.

 

She’s at his bedroom door before she notices, as if her mind was catching up with her body instead of the other way around, and she wonders if the drugs they shoved up her IV back at Fringe Medical might still be having an effect on her (it would explain a lot of things, a lot words uttered in the last few hours, few of them pleasant). She leans her head on the jamb and releases a breath she didn’t know she was holding, feeling the stress of the day pushing to come out through the walls she’s built, threatening to demolish her structures one harsh word at a time.

 

Henry lies awkwardly on his side, his body arranged to avoid anything coming in contact with his right side, where the extent of his injuries seems to have been centered. His position is uncomfortable at best, the moonlight highlighting the way the sheets are thrown haphazardly over his lower body, the faint blue glow outlining his features to show him grimacing in pain even in his sleep, and she realizes how exhausted he must have been to even consider falling asleep like that. She hates seeing him like this, would be willing to submit herself to his pain if it meant some sort of relief for him.

 

All the teams at the site had had someone injured to some extent that day – Ella included – but Henry had been the worst by far, having been the closest to the building’s glass panels as the nitrogen bomb went off, jagged pieces of crystal embedding themselves to the bone in sections of his body as he came out running with the last of the missing children in his arms, the blast throwing him off his feet as he curled around the diminutive figure and shielded him from the impact. The boy had walked out harmless and into his mother’s waiting arms while Henry had been evacuated in an ambulance as he bled out.

 

 He is lucky to be alive, lucky that none of the shrapnel had gone deep enough to puncture his lungs, lucky that the explosion’s destructive wavelengths hadn’t caused any internal bleeding.

 

They’d worked on him all afternoon she knows, having been there for most of the procedure, neglecting her own treatment in the process. They’d had to remove the splintered glass piece by piece before cauterizing the wounds and closing him up with the lasers and the cutting edge medical technology that is, in her mind, the only reason she can see him now, breathing in front of her as he sleeps. She’s not prepared to loose anyone else today.

 

She doesn’t think she’ll ever be prepared to lose _him_.

 

Henry turns over after a couple of minutes, woken up by the feeling of being watched as he rolls woodenly onto his back, grunting in discomfort at the new pressure on his battered limbs. “…Ella?” he says gruffly, blinking sleep away in the dark, his pupils wide as his eyes get comfortable in the lack of light, staring at the prone figure perched on his door.

 

“Hey,” she acknowledges, too tired to move from her place, the adrenalin of the day leaving her completely at the sound of his voice, and she feels her legs wobbling under her in fatigue. It’s as if they’d flushed her of all the despair and the anger, and all she feels is numb.

 

He’s alive, and that is all that matters. All that remains.

 

“Are you…are you alright?” he asks, confused, her visit unexpected though never unwelcome. She looks everything but ‘alright’ - even if it’s the haze of the morphine speaking - perhaps as a physical reflection of the way he’s feeling, and it worries him. He rises into a sitting position slowly, trying not to jostle his side as he rubs his face, scratching his beard before running a hand through his hair. Everything hurts.

 

She chuckles, the shadows in the room masking the grimace on her face. “I’m fine,” she says, her voice a whisper in the night, the words not unkind but uttered with such finality that he refrains from pushing further. She’ll talk about it when she’s ready, sooner rather than later, this very night perhaps. But for the time being she’ll focus on him and escape the crumbling ruins of her heart.

 

He seems to sense her mood, feeling her out the way a shark smells blood in the water and pats the empty spot beside him on the bed, “come here,” he says softly, a request, and she moves wordlessly to the side of the bed, looses her shoes and lies down beside him on top of the covers, her back to him, not yet ready to have his discerning gaze rest upon her. He puts his good hand on her back, the warm palm spread across her spine in a gesture of comfort as he settles on his back, his head lolling down into the pillows in the sleep that never really left him. She’s never understood how he always _knows_ where and when to put his hands, but she’d seen enough of Peter to know that it was his gift, and perhaps Walter’s before him.

 

“Sleep,” he mumbles, already somewhere else, his breathing evening out as his heart slows down to a slow, steady thumping in the background, the reminder that he’s very much alive behind her. She knows she won’t sleep, no matter how hard she tries to screw her eyelids shut and leave the world behind for a few hours, so she clutches the pillow underneath her and stares at the bleach white of the wall.

 

After a while the tears come.

 

*

 

She’s sitting on the chair beside his bedroom window the next time Henry awakens grunting in pain, the medication having long worn off.  He brings his good hand to his face, rubbing the last remnants of sleep away as he catches her from the corner of his eye. He turns his whole body towards her as fast as his sore muscles allow him, feeling uncomfortably stretched, and tired still. He is taking her in, observing, trying to decipher what it is that has her looking like she’d rather be in his position than feel whatever it is she feels at the moment.  He knows just by looking at her that she hasn’t slept, her bloodshot eyes a tell tale sign that she has been crying.  He has somehow always known these things, and while she might be able to fool most people he has a front row seat to the workings of her mind; there is little that she hides from him, if anything.

 

Something has happened. Something besides him almost dying, and it frustrates him not to know what that might be. The fact that he can’t do anything about it in his condition doesn’t really help.

 

She sits with her legs folded underneath her, still in her jeans (which means that she at least went home before coming here), a mug in her hands as she stares out the window, pretending that she hasn’t realized that he’s awake. He stares at her in the quiet of the moonlit room and can’t help but remember thinking, so long ago, that she was too soft, too sweet for the job they did. Time and experience have proven him wrong over the years, but as he looks at her in the half – light he can hear the echoes of his own words reverberating.

 

“You look like crap.” He says, the silence in the room too thick, too oppressing to let it be. Ella turns her head then, looks at him through tired, dejected eyes and manages to lift the corner of her mouth in the worst attempt at a smile he has ever seen from her.

 

“You’re one to talk,” she leaves it at that, matter of fact, doesn’t give him the chance of a response. Her voice is weary, rough with disuse. She barely recognizes it herself. She stands, unable to look him in the eye, and leaves the room, makes her way to the kitchen where she deposits the now empty mug of hot chocolate in the sink. She picks her things up from where she’d carelessly thrown them earlier in the evening, arranging them neatly on a corner of the couch. She has always found organizing to be calming, methodical, as if by arranging objects into their proper order her thoughts might follow suit. She knows it’s an acquired habit (from her Aunt perhaps, she can’t be sure), possibly a sort of compulsive behavior, but it is one that usually brings a small measure of calm into the raging storm of her thoughts, and she’s thankful for it. 

 

She comes back into the room with a glass of water and Henry’s medication, sitting beside him on the bed and making sure he doesn’t hurt himself while taking them, holding his head up as he swallows even tough he attempts a half – hearted glare. He has always hated being babied. She can see, if she pays close attention in the dark, the blossoming bruises coloring his skin (because no matter how advanced, miracles are still not a part of their medical repertoire, and the bruises can’t be helped), their tones mottled by degrees, scattered around the fresh litany of infinitesimal scars that will remain like brands upon his skin, engravings of his own history.

 

Henry has never been a very talkative man to the rest of the world, only speaking when he has something to say, but there has never been a filter between them, between what they think and what they say to each other. Even if it might take a while for them to get it all out. When they’re together or among their very few friends, Henry comes alive, seems to glow with intensity that is all his own. He’s an entertainer deep inside, a snake charmer by nature, and he manages to do so with as few words as necessary in the direst of circumstances. She has always envied him that.

 

But what Henry does better, has always done better, is to watch.

 

She can feel his eyes following her, watching her every movement, her every intake of breath with a surgeon’s precision. It’s what he does when he doesn’t know what stance to take in a certain situation, his preventive mechanism by excellence: if he can see it coming, he can see it dead - as he puts. She gives up the fight, if there ever was one, and lies down beside him for the second time that night, this time pressed against his side as he puts his good arm around her, her head on his shoulder.

“I was worried about you,” she breaks the thin layer of silence permeating the space between their minds, letting him know that she’s ready to talk if he knows how to ask. He always has.

 

“Is that why you’re here?” Henry asks, indulging her in this familiar dance they sway to, “because you were worried?” he’s not trying to be sarcastic, and yet she knows that they’re both aware that, even though her main reason to come was because she _was_ worried, she has more selfish reasons to be there. Comfort might be the least of them.

 

“He left.” She says weakly, unable to avoid the slight unsteadiness of her voice. His answer is not immediate, his shock palpable, but it comes when she needs it, once the words and their meaning have registered, his arm pulling her tighter against him.

 

“Rick?” he asks, knowing the answer but wanting to make sure that he’s not misreading her. She nods against his shoulder, biting her lip, “ Did he bother to say why?” he can’t help the degree of coldness that slips into his tone.

 

“He…He came out of his shift when he heard we were in the hospital,” she feels the need to explain, “ he wanted to take me home, but I didn’t want to leave your side until you woke up. He got overprotective, said I needed to rest, we fought. I went home with him, we fought some more. I got so angry with him, he wouldn’t let me do things by myself, wouldn’t let me come check up on you saying I couldn’t drive like that, he even dared to take my keys. I wasn’t even admitted through the ER, it was just a couple of scratches. I was…shaken, furious, I said some things. We both did, and I don’t know how much of it I meant, maybe too much. But then he…” she stops, breathes, goes on, “he said he couldn’t take it anymore, couldn’t keep worrying about me every second of the day with all the risks I take, said that he’d thought he could handle it but he didn’t, that I was too preoccupied with my job to pay attention to something as time consuming as a relationship, that I couldn’t distance myself from work enough to spend time with him and that he was tired of it. He just grabbed his stuff and left.” She sighs. He squeezes her arm slightly, letting her know that he’s there with her. That he’s watching, listening.

 

“He still thinks you and I have something,” she says after a while, “ he said, and I quote: ‘you’d be happy to know that you no longer had competition’.” She can’t hide the dark humor in her tone, it’s not the first time someone has suggested such a thing but there’s nothing they can do to stop it, Henry’s real identity being kept secret to avoid the bureaucratic apocalypse that would ensue. Alternate selves aren’t something they discuss with cadets at the Academy.

 

He bursts out laughing, the mere concept too ridiculous for him to accept. She joins him, the first real smile she has shown all day etched on her face at the mirth on his. They laugh until his sides hurt, his chuckles transforming into little grunts of pain.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says seriously, once the moment for laughter has passed. And she doesn’t need to ask what he’s sorry for, she knows. She also knows it’s not his fault. She tells him so.

 

“It’s just that…everyone who loves me leaves. My Dad left, Mom died, Aunt Liv got killed…” she feels him flinch slightly at that, knows that some masochistic part of him still blames himself. She doesn’t finish, doesn’t need to. He understands better than most the fear of being left alone.

 

“Hey,” he says softly, “what am I, painted on the wall?”

 

She shakes her head, buries it on his shoulder. He’s become the closest thing to a brother she’ll ever have, and yet he’s so much more than that. He’s her best friend, her confidant, another indispensable part of her, and it terrifies her to think of how close she came to losing him today.

 

“I know,” she reassures him, “That’s not what I meant.”

 

He sighs, letting the minutes go by as the medication takes effect, making him drowsy once more. He hugs her against him, doesn’t want her to feel like she’s alone, wants to make sure she knows he’ll always be there. It’s the words that fail him, refuse to come out. He’s sure she knows anyway, but she’s all he’s ever had, the memory of his mother too dim to count as a life, and he wants her to hear it from his mouth. Alas, it is not to be, at least not tonight.

 

She can feel, with his familiar warmth around her, the weight of the last thirty – six hours finally fall down on her, her exhaustion too deep to ignore as she closes her eyes, the world drowned out for once. She thinks, on that moment of prescience before sleep takes her, that whomever pitched them together in the twisted path of their lives got it wrong.

 

In another place, another life, she could have loved him.


End file.
